A Poem In Response to a Photo

I published a poem at ArtVilla called Light Somewhere. It was inspired by looking at this picture of Evelyn McHale, who fell to her death from the Empire State Building in 1947.

Get Lucky with Blurred Lines

I haven't posted anything in a while and I haven't posted poetry in an even longer time. But seeing Stephen Colbert using Henry Kissinger for his much praised performance, I don't know. It just disturbs me, along with the way everyone who is supposedly leftist and liberal looks past it. Then again, without amnesia, how could we expect Hillary Clinton to be president in 2016? She'll be making history then, as long as we can ignore the history she helped make in Babylon. I dread the day George W. Bush gets to trot out his imbecilic grin and give voice to it on the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror LVII. It will be heralded, maybe even nominated for an Emmy. So it goes. 

Get Lucky with Blurred Lines

You tell yourself he cannot be an Eichmann, no,

He is a Jew and an old Jew at that,

An old Jew could never commit such terrible crimes

Not for the banal reason of an promotion, a desk,

Evil always has an ideology behind it, at least

Evil in America needs a cross to rally behind or burn.

And he can easily go along with the joke, evil

Never jokes, never makes a cameo,

Evil demands the spotlight, it demands to be a star,

Of course you are a star too, with a show,

A show where you dance with him while an audience

Too young to remember a secret bombing laughs.

The script calls for him to call for security

To escort you from the premises,

Decades ago, he called on friends in other countries

To overthrow their presidents, fill stadiums up

With folksinging hooligans and gun them all down,

Perhaps you want to highlight the contrast?

Here he is now, harmless like an urchin,

A buffoon who might even drop his glasses in a toilet,

An elder statesman with his gravitas swinging

Like a snood tucked under his pale chin,

You are old enough to remember beauties hooking

Their arms with him to promenade down  red carpets.

He gives off no aphrodisiac now, not for you, no,

You dance too quickly for him to catch you,

Even if the camera lingers, the smell does not reach you,

You are too busy, you must go embrace an actor,

Meanwhile, the urchin leaves his desk behind

To sway a would-be candidate waiting in the wings.

Terry Gilliam Needs Money

Specifically, MY money. I guess he still hasn't recouped his losses from the Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

I Wish I Had Something Wonderful to Tell You

But I don't. Nothing enough to vote for at least. You can watch this disturbing clip instead.

An American Diplomat in Franco Spain: A Book Review

An American Diplomat in Franco Spain by Michael Aaron Rockland (paperback, 178 pages, Hansen) is a memoir from a former member of the Foreign Service who was stationed in Spain during the late 1960s, a period of time when the country was still under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. The work is a quick read and filled with many amusing anecdotes along with comparisons between the American and Spanish ways of life. Several famous figures make an appearance within its pages as well as a first-hand account of a military disaster that threatened to become Spain's version of Chernobyl. However, Rockland's work has a tendency to digress into observations about the present as well as his life back in the States after serving in Spain. Both of these make the book seem padded for length. In addition, even though the term "Franco" and "Spain" are in the title, the memoir itself deals little with the everyday reality of life under the Caudillo. 

At the heart of the memoir is the story of a young diplomat's struggle to put his personal politics and beliefs aside to serve his country abroad. When Rockland arrives in Spain, he is overjoyed to be in a land whose language and culture he admires, but he is dismayed having to work with a fascist regime his parents raised him to oppose. Making matters worse, Rockland often encounters ex-Nazis the government is sheltering at routine diplomatic functions. Rockland does try to resist as best he can without becoming a persona non grata.  In one scene for instance, the author manages to sneak out of having to shake Franco's hand when the dictator comes to an event and the other diplomats have to stand in a line to greet him. As his time at the embassy goes on, Rockland's idealism wears away and when he is transferred from Madrid to Saigon, he decides to leave the Foreign Service for good.   

But he makes the most of his time in Spain and treats the reader to a series of amusing anecdotes and encounters.  As an aspiring writer, Rockland visits the haunts of Ernest Hemingway and meets a female bullfighter who has a secret theory that explains why the famed author killed himself.  Meanwhile, he engages in a battle of wills and wits with his neighbor's dog, whose owners he suspects of being Nazis exiled from Romania.  He also learns to adapt to his position as a Jew in Spain, which means clarifying numerous misconceptions among the Spanish, such as Jews having horns. For his part, he learns not to take offense at such things as the costumes of the Semana Santa despite their resemblance to those worn by certain groups back home. In a particularly fascinating turn of events, Rockland's son auditions for and wins a role in the movie Dr. Zhivago, which was filmed in Spain. 

Through his position at the embassy, Rockland gets to meet some of the important people of the era. One of these is Martin Luther King Jr. The author acts as an unofficial interpreter and assistant to the civil rights leader while he stops in Spain for a brief visit as part of a tour of Europe. In their time together, Rockland gives King a lesson in geography and helps him get over a bout of diarrhea.  King makes Rockland realize his own prejudices, particularly against the South, and that Black Southerners are as much a part of the region and its culture as are its Whites. A little while later, the diplomat meets Ted Kennedy and largely performs the same role for him, except that he also gets to serve as the senator's social companion. This comes with the downside of having to pick up the Senator's bar tab, which serves as another reality check for Rockland because it was his idolization of JFK which lead him into the Foreign Service in the first place.  He is also involved with the diplomatic response to the Palomares incident when a B-52s collided with a Stratotanker over Spain during a refueling mission. The collision caused the bomber to inadvertently drop several hydrogen bombs which had to be retrieved without setting off mass panic. In the end, Rockland went for a swim off the coast with Ambassador Angier Biddle Duke to assuage concerns about radioactivity   

Despite these picaresque incidents and others, they are not enough to justify a book-length treatment for Rockland's years in Spain. All too often, the chapters are bulked up with gratuitous asides which take the reader out of Franco's Spain (or Francoist Spain, why "Franco Spain" was chosen for the title is a mystery) and into the present with only the flimsiest link to the author's experiences in late sixties Madrid. Sometimes the asides can be interesting, such as his observations on bullfighting and tipping, but they still digress, along with his idea to have special personal ads for garlic eaters. All too often, Rockland tackles topics such as Columbus, cosmopolitanism in America, the Protestant work ethic, and our changing terms for Black Americans, instead of discussing the nature of the dictatorship he had to work with.  

An American Diplomat in Franco Spain starts out strong but finishes weak. Perhaps Rockland could have made his memoir about the sixties in general instead of his time in Spain since he often references what he was doing during the decade before and after his tenure in Madrid. He mentions the Kennedys, hearing Bob Dylan for the first time, working in South Vietnam, and dealing with campus strife, all subjects which could be elaborated upon to form a more perfect memoir. It would certainly give Rockland an opportunity to dig through his personal archives to find more interesting pictures. The photographs supplied for the book mainly feature him in a variety of seated poses, either by himself at a desk, or next to older men proudly crossing their legs to show off bit of calf.  

Show Time: A Book Review

Another book came for me in the mail a while back and I finally got around to reading it. Today's review is for Phil Harvey's Show Time, a 257 page novel from Lost Coast Press.  Lord of the Flies meets Survivor in this tale of seven reality TV contestants left stranded on an island in the middle of Lake Superior live in front of an international audience. However, despite this promising premise, Harvey's novel falls flat, with clunky and far-fetched dialogue, too many loose ends, and a failure to take account of the ways reality TV has changed since the late 1990s. Despite these flaws, the novel does hold some appeal if one forgets the reality TV show aspect and focuses instead on the characters' attempts to survive in the wilderness and make it through winter without starving to death.

Show Time is set in the not so distant future, when the viewing public has become bored with what violence is offered to them on the TV. To satisfy this demand, a group of TV executives have created a new breed of reality show, where seven contestants are brought together on an island and have to survive the elements and one another. If they can make it, the contestants will win $400,000 apiece. The group onsists of four men and three woman. Each one brings skills of their own, but also faults which threaten their ability to work together to improve their odds of survival. Most of the novel centers on Ambrose, who is a capable and levelheaded, but suffers from a severe gambling addiction that he can only pay off by participating on the show and winning.

One of the fascinating parts of the novel deals with how the characters enter into a shifting array of alliances to secure food, shelter, and other supplies. Even though the seven adults know they are being watched and judged by millions of people, it does not take long until their true, instinctual natures emerge. Harvey posits an interesting take on the different philosophies of human nature, which reality television is a ready means of conveying.  However, they do not surrender to their violent impulses and create a purely Hobbesian world of endless strife on the island. Nor do they build a peaceful Utopia fit for Rousseau's noble savage. Instead, their self-interest motivates them to work together in a Machiavellian fashion. A barter economy is set up where anything, including sex, can be exchanged for goods and the contestants continue to vie for power, especially the males Ivan, Rudy, Ambrose, and Valentin.

The novel could have spent more time focusing on this development, showing how over time the behavior of the individuals on the island becomes more institutionalized and the effects of their division of labor. The lives of the female characters, Ahai, Maureen, and Cecily  would also have been interesting to spend time on. Would their trading sex for protection and food become more regulated over time in this evolving dynamic? Or would they eventually be forced to deny their right to participate in such exchanges? The world of the executives producing the television show needed work as well. It could either have been expanded or dropped altogether. Throughout Show Time, the people putting the drama together constantly speak of how the violence of the show is necessary to keep the population pacified  but this idea is never quite fleshed out with too much telling and not enough showing.

Instead, their are too many scenes which seem designed to merely showcase the authors' idea of "snappy" and "witty" dialogue. Unfortunately it is this dialogue which is likely to take the reader out of the world of the novel. All too often the characters resort an affected speech that seemed drawn from pulp and noir novels and is out of place, especially among people starving in the wilderness. These ridiculous exchanges made me put down the book and write either "wtf," "ugh," "really?", or just "?" next to the offending passages. It is not a good sign for a novel when a reader has to stop eating their malai kofta and feels compelled to mark up your book.

Nevertheless, it is a quick and compelling enough read when the novel centers on the inhabitants of the island, and no one mentions or worries about the the cameras. These sections which deal with simply trying to survive are engaging and well written, even if they tend to get repetitive. There are only so many different ways of writing hunting and fishing scenes. Harvey also does a decent job of dealing with the effects of expose to prolonged calorie reduction and heat deprivation.  At times it seems the whole reality show conceit is just a way to write a novel about survival instead a scathing commentary on the media and American culture. It seems difficult to believe people would spend so many months risking death or serious injury just for $400,000 when there are so many other televised contests that require far less risk for far greater reward.

Show Time treads on previous concerns of where reality television might be heading without adding anything new to the discussion. More importantly, it ignores the ways reality TV has changed since it initially become popular with Survivor.  This work might have been timely in 1999, when shows were centered around competitive ordeals held out in the dark wilds of nature. Now, it feels dated, showing us a vision of a future which seems unlikely due to the rise of shows which deal with the lifestyles of the somehow rich and famous. These have become America's current opiate, not bloodletting spectacles. True, we are glued to our television sets so we can watch others' bad behavior, but these deprived actions occur within civilization, not outside of it.

The Time for Justice: A Book Review

Hello there my longtime readers and my (as of this writing) 52 followers! Today I am inaugurating a new feature for this blog, book reviews. It seems my name and website have gotten into the hands of numerous esteemed publicists and they are clamoring for me to say a few things about the books by the authors they represent. Since I have nothing much else to do these days except wait for literary stardom and attendant publicists of my own, I have decided to give this new project a go.

The Time forJustice: How the excesses of time have broken our civil justice system, (Onward Publishing, 185 pages) is a new non-fiction book by acclaimed lawyer Anthony V. Curto, written with the assistance of Ronald E. Roel. Mr. Curto has worked for several decades representing clients as diverse as Ted Turner, Linda Lovelace, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn and has an insider’s view of the problems that have plagued our civil justice system for several decades.  Curto reduces these issues to one chief obstacle: time. Specifically, the way time is used to prevent settlements from being reached and enforced in a manner that helps those who need them.

While the shortcomings of our criminal system often receive more attention in the press, Curto reveals how the bureaucratic and administrative burdens placed on the civil courts have led to justice being denied to those who turn to the courts for help. These encumbrances allow numerous delaying tactics to bankrupt plaintiffs with attorneys’ fees or prevent judgments from being collected. Through the examples of numerous court cases, Curto shows how these methods work in practice. They include creating jurisdictional disputes, arguing over how to fill out paperwork, failing to show up in court, filing appeal after appeal, and pushing back trial dates as far as possible.

Curto spends most of the book focused on one particular example which did not involve him personally, but fascinated him nonetheless as it unfolded: the case between Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. and his constituent Esther James. Their dispute began in 1960, during a television interview when Powell named James as a “bag woman” working for Harlem gangsters. James sued the Congressman to receive compensation for defamation of character and an apology. Through skillful manipulation of the judicial system, which included making use of his privileges as a Congressman, his residency in Puerto Rico, and the complicated ownership of his property, Powell managed to prevent the bulk of the settlement against him from being paid out. He also ended up avoiding punishment for contempt of court.

While Curto acknowledges that the Powell case had many extenuating circumstances involved (namely the benefits of his elected office) he nonetheless feels it showcases how the legal system can become tied up by a single case. At the end of the book, he notes that by 1969 more than 80 judges across 10 different courts had been involved in the proceedings, along with 59 jurors. The official paperwork for the case ended up forming a stack nearly 20 feet high.

In between his coverage of Esther James’ quest for justice, Curto also briefly focuses on several other cases that involve similarly lengthy periods of litigation. This helps to reinforce his arguments about specific ways the system needs to be changed and the consequences from justice delayed.  In one instance, Curto talks about a client frustrated with the stalling tactics of a deadbeat distributor. He hired goons to collect the money he was owed without telling his attorney. In another case, he shows how a man gets away without paying a jeweler for an expensive wristwatch because he manages to avoid court summons until the lawyers’ fees for the case outweigh the value of said watch.   

Curto’s The Time for Jusice is engaging and raises good points without being overwhelming to the reader or becoming mired in legalese. It is easy for anyone without a legal background to follow both the cases he discusses and the improvements he recommends. He helpfully structures the book to review his points and conveniently sets apart his suggestions from the rest of the text so that he can go into detail about them. Curto further helps the reader by reviewing these ideas at the end. His list for improvements to the civil justice system include the following:

• Set trial dates as soon as summons are answered
• Broaden the authority of judges
• Eliminate pretrial paperwork
• Require plaintiffs to pay expenses if appeal is lost
• Enforce court decisions
• Settle jurisdictional disputes upfront
• Require litigants to attend their trials
• Keep the same judge on a case
• Expand small claims court

The only major problem with the book is how Curto assigns blame for the current state of the civil judicial system. Understandably, he wants to focus on exposing the problems that the courts face without getting bogged down in partisan politics or demonizing the legal profession. However, claiming that time is the chief enemy focuses the blame in the wrong direction. After all, time is a mere abstraction. Curto confuses a chief weapon of those who deny justice with those who allow them to get away with it. Instead we should be learning who is actually responsible for our state of affairs and who is in the way of effective reform.

By telling the reader that only time is the villain, our system appears to be tragically broken. Lawyers, judges, law enforcement, plaintiffs, and defendants are depicted as merely acting out a choreography of delay.  The story behind who or what created the rules that guide them is hardly discussed. Curto’s list of specific reforms is a good start of what should be done, but without being told what individuals or organizations are working to advance them, the average citizen is given no blueprint for actually making them a reality. All that can be done, it seems, is to try and appease Chronos for the return of a judicial golden age of quick and speedy trials.

This Should Be Safe for Work

A short story of mine, The Occupation, is up at Otherwise Caffeinated. Special thanks to editors KC Kirkpatrick and Toni Odell!

If There is No God, What Really Follows

I came across this list by Dennis Prager in which he describes what would happen if there was no God, or more appropriately, if people came to believe that there is no God. It's the usual claptrap about religious belief that uses the old argument from morality to prove the existence of God, or at least argue for the necessity of belief. The problem with his list is that its full of holes, each point grasps very little about the nature of religious belief, particularly Christianity (although Prager is Jewish he has to have read a Chick tract somewhere or other), and woefully ignores history, philosophy, and sociology. Let's get down to brass tacks and rip this apart shall we? Atheist, Agnostic, or Theist, the discussion between us is not helped by this sort of thing.

First, the introduction. Prager here talks about how students learn all about the Inquisition and how it is linked to religion, but that they are never told the secular roots of the twentieth century's great calamities, such as Mao, Stalin, and Hitler. That's odd, because I remember learning in school that these ideologies lead people to slaughter one another and never thought, "gee I wonder if it was Catholicism's fault that Stalin happened?" Prager seems willing to ignore the genocidal parts of the Old Testament, where God specifically orders the Jews to massacre and enslave their neighbors. Of course this doesn't let Stalin off the hook, or Hitler, or anyone else, but it does undermine his claim that God is a meaningful source for morality. The problem is also that he lumps all secular belief systems together. A Liberal secularist and a Marxist are two different people, and even within Marxism, there were those who opposed Stalin and Lenin's excesses of power.

Prager then goes on to write this:

For all the problems associated with belief in God, the death of God leads to far more of them. So, while it is not possible to prove (or disprove) God's existence, what is provable is what happens when people stop believing in God.

Unfortunately he doesn't follow this line of thought through, and acknowledges little positive influence that secularization has had. Gays would still be burned, tithes forcibly collected, science stifled, and his own ancestors would still be stuck in Ghettos if it wasn't for it. But these details aren't worth noting, instead there is nothing but bloodshed and decadence because people stopped kneeling and blindly accepting everything their priests and poorly edited books told them. The idea that maybe these movements and dictators could inspire such ferocious and bloody loyalty because they took on the trappings of the old churches is also not considered.

Anyways, to his points, he's got fourteen of them, just like Mr. Wilson.

1. Without God there is no good and evil; there are only subjective opinions that we then label "good" and "evil." This does not mean that an atheist cannot be a good person. Nor does it mean that all those who believe in God are good; there are good atheists and there are bad believers in God. It simply means that unless there is a moral authority that transcends humans from which emanates an objective right and wrong, "right" and "wrong" no more objectively exist than do "beautiful" and "ugly."

The problem is that even WITH a God we are left with subjective moral facts because every religion claims their God wants things a certain way. A secular worldview could take such principals as Utilitarianism for a way to think about the issue, or base its reasoning from enlightened self-interest, which even religion has to fall back on (after all, when one acts good to get into Heaven, isn't that stemming from the same desire?)

2. Without God, there is no objective meaning to life. We are all merely random creations of natural selection whose existence has no more intrinsic purpose or meaning than that of a pebble equally randomly produced.

Number one, what is this objective meaning worth? Since only God knows it, it really doesn't do us much good. We assume it's out there, but it's not even much of a crutch since we have no idea what it is. Number two, simply because there is no God does not mean human life is worthless, or is equal to a pebble. If we are the products of random chance, it took more variables to make us than that pebble, or even a rock the same size as us. That alone means that humans do not lose their uniqueness under such a universe.

And intrinsic purpose? What is that? Notice how Mr. Prager claims that without God we lose our intrinsic purpose, and that we also (point 8) lose our free will as well. This seems to be a contradiction. An intrinsic purpose and meaning imply a determined being, one that isn't free.

3. Life is ultimately a tragic fare if there is no God. We live, we suffer, we die — some

horrifically, many prematurely — and there is only oblivion afterward.

It's tragic even if there is a God. A being claims to be all loving and all powerful, but we are left to suffer anyways under the illusion that it cares. Nothing really changes if the secularist has his or her way.

4. Human beings need instruction manuals. This is as true for acting morally and wisely as it is for properly flying an airplane. One's heart is often no better a guide to what is right and wrong than it is to the right and wrong way to fly an airplane. The post-religious secular world claims to need no manual; the heart and reason are sufficient guides to leading a good life and to making a good world.

So many flaws in this statement. Let me screw my head back on, it just spun off. Alright. there we go. Several things are wrong with this argument.

Humans do need instruction manuals. We are not born with intrinsic notions of right and wrong. we have an instinct towards self-preservation and that's it. over time this drive is channeled into service towards others, as well as being courteous and polite. I agree there. But the problem is that acting rightly is not a set of specific instructions like flying an airplane. There are too many variables. The notion that one cannot trust their heart because the heart can't tell you how to fly a plane, is terribly misguided because it confuses one set of instructions for another. More appropriately, ethics is a game and not a guide to operating a piece of machinery. One has to react and plan in a given situation with others.

This runs counter as well to most Christian ethical thinking (although the author is not a Christian, he has the Judeo-Christian God in mind), since Christian ethics COME from the heart. There is no more law, there is only love, which is a force and not a body of set principals. This is, after all, why Christians claim they can eat bacon and their women aren't ritually unclean while menstruating.

The heart and reason are all we have, even if we are religious. So many groups claims so many different ethical and moral imperatives that it is hard to see what believing in a God means. Plenty of groups say one thing is allowed and others claim the exact opposite, even when they claim to follow the same book.

He also claims that the secular world claims to not need a manual. This is not true either, as there are several ethical codes of conduct that different groups have come up with (Marxism, Buddhism, Humanism, Utilitarianism, Objectivism, etc.), while not relying on any divine revelation. One may not agree with them, and neither holds sway over the majority of atheists, but most theists in the world don't believe in the Resurrection of Christ either.

5. If there is no God, the kindest and most innocent victims of torture and murder have no better a fate after death than do the most cruel torturers and mass murderers. Only if there is a good God do Mother Teresa and Adolf Hitler have different fates.

What the author fails to realize though (and maybe he needs to read Jack Chick, I know, I know, I keep saying that) is that for Christians salvation is by faith not works. Adolf Hitler can repent on is death bed and go to heaven. His horrible crimes would still have been committed. Mother Teresa can have a crisis of faith before she dies and where does she end up? In hell. There are also plenty of religions that don;t have heaven and hell, and in the Old Testament it's not clear what happens when people die. They simply go to sleep with their ancestors for the most part.

6. With the death of Judeo-Christian values in the West, many Westerners believe in little. That is why secular Western Europe has been unwilling and therefore unable to confront evil, whether it was Communism during the Cold War or Islamic totalitarians in its midst today.

In City of God, Augustine confronts the pagans who said the same thing of early Christians. they blamed them for undermining the Empire and allowing it to be lax in its defenses, letting the barbarians to invade. Secularists are accused of the same things these days. When the ruling classes lose their grip on power, or when they themselves are too weak to fight, they often blame those with different beliefs for their troubles

The author seems to willingly ignore many of the secularists who serve in the armed forces of those nations involved in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as many of the intellectuals and public figures who have condemned Islamic extremism, especially in the reaction to the Danish depictions of a certain prophet.

The fact is that secularists do oppose Islamic totalitarianism, they just think that labeling it as a crusade and invading countries preemptively is not a good decision and are critical of a war against terror that allies the US with such progressive regimes as Saudi Arabia

7. Without God, people in the West often become less, not more, rational. It was largely the secular, not the religious, who believed in the utterly irrational doctrine of Marxism.
It was largely the secular, not the religious, who believed that men's and women's natures are basically the same, that perceived differences between the sexes are all socially induced. Religious people in Judeo-Christian countries largely confine their irrational beliefs to religious beliefs (theology), while the secular, without religion to enable the non-rational to express itself, end up applying their irrational beliefs to society, where such irrationalities do immense harm.

This is an incredible bizarre argument. Prager admits that religious beliefs are irrational, which the first thing. Second he thinks that becoming secular makes you a Communist, a common ploy among theists. And third he is right in suggesting that secularists were responsible for bringing about sexually equality, and he seems to think this was a bad thing, founded on "irrational" beliefs.

This argument is really grasping for any veneer of intelligence. We should believe in God because it will make us more rational on the outside and keep our irrationality on the inside. This is another unhistorical claim made by the author. We only have to look at the Crusades and witch hunts to know that irrational beliefs, when they are the foundations of a society, will produce irrational actions and are not confined simply to theology or (in the case of Marxism) philosophy. Religious people always want to make their societies function according to their faith. Occasional it works well as in the Civil Rights movement, but most of the time ends up with books banned, books burned, people labeled heretics, and people burned.

8. If there is no God, the human being has no free will. He is a robot, whose every action is dictated by genes and environment. Only if one posits human creation by a Creator that transcends genes and environment who implanted the ability to transcend genes and environment can humans have free will.

Soooooo if God controls everything, God knows what we are going to do, and we can't go against God's will, we are still free. The prisoners in concentration camps and gulags had more freedom than we do if God exists. Actually only an atheist can believe in free will, but one who is not a strict materialist (i.e. Peter Unger).

9. If there is no God, humans and "other" animals are of equal value. Only if one posits that humans, not animals, are created in the image of God do humans have any greater intrinsic sanctity than baboons. This explains the movement among the secularized elite to equate humans and animals.

Okay, first, they don't want to equate humans with animals. They want to give them equal consideration when it comes to causing a being unnecessary pain. They are also not unanimously supported by the secular community and they have religious advocates as well. Second, they are not "elites." Secularists don't have a Pope or a High Priest. Thirdly, as humans we can value members of our own species without needing to make reference to God. Simply saying humans matter because they are made in the likeness of a man in the sky is no real argument. If any other creature had a God it would make its God resemble it. Horses would give their gods hooves, pigs would have gods with snouts.

10. Without God, there is little to inspire people to create inspiring art. That is why contemporary art galleries and museums are filled with "art" that celebrates the scatological, the ugly and the shocking. Compare this art to Michelangelo's art in the Sistine chapel. The latter elevates the viewer — because Michelangelo believed in something higher than himself and higher than all men.

The fact that religious people have often destroyed works of art is of course ignored. While many people in the past were inspired by religion for their art (and many are still) getting rid of religion does not lead to the end of it. Look at most of the songs written, and how many of them are about human love. Something is motivating the writers of these songs, and it is entirely worldly in its subject matter. While I'm not too happy about the state of the art world, I wonder if Mr. Prager has been to many art galleries, and how many Catholic churches he has entered. While the "scatological" is not found there, plenty of art that celebrates suffering and gore can be seen.

11. Without God nothing is holy. This is definitional. Holiness emanates from a belief in the holy. This explains, for example, the far more widespread acceptance of public cursing in secular society than in religious society. To the religious, there is holy speech and profane speech. In much of secular society the very notion of profane speech is mocked.

The concept of "holy" only exists within a religious context. Remove that and the term is not meaningful, true. But losing the term doesn't really matter. If you took away Judaism, you would lose the ability to call things Kosher, but so what? Most people would not notice its loss in their daily lives.

12. Without God, humanist hubris is almost inevitable. If there is nothing higher than man, no Supreme Being, man becomes the supreme being.

Hubris exists with God and without it. People simply think they are carrying out God's will. In fact this is a form of hubris which is more dangerous because any one can believe it. Secular hubris is usually much more well founded, it takes a period of success and a position of power to develop.

13. Without God, there are no inalienable human rights. Evolution confers no rights. Molecules confer no rights. Energy has no moral concerns. That is why America's Founders wrote in the Declaration of Independence that we are endowed "by our Creator" with certain inalienable rights. Rights depend upon a moral source, a rights giver.

The problem is that the people who did the most to oppose the early advocates of these rights were themselves religious too. And God can take rights away, he often does so in the Bible and Koran, as well as in the Book of Mormon. Look at how he treats Job. How can God punish us for breaking his laws when we could not elect him? That doesn't seem to be the kind of thing our founders would approve of, even if they did put vague religious phrases in their manifestos an declarations.

14. "Without God," Dostoevsky famously wrote, "all is permitted." There has been plenty of evil committed by believers in God, but the widespread cruelties and the sheer number of innocents murdered by secular regimes — specifically Nazi, Fascist and Communist regimes — dwarfs the evil done in the name of religion.

Crimes are crimes, we don't need to play the numbers game. Do secularists commit crimes? Of course. Have Secularists slaughter people? Yes. This is an argument for secularism, not religion. Why? Because if he exists, God allowed the Nazis and Soviets to kill so many people. He also let his own followers kill people as well. Think of all the people who prayed, asking to be spared from the gas chambers, and whose prayer weren't answered. Believer and non-believer both perished. Is this a God worthy of worshipping? Believer and non-believer both perished.

Even with God, all is permitted. Its simply a matter of waiting for the right, convenient revelation.

As noted at the beginning, none of this proves, or even necessarily argues for, God's existence. It makes the case for the necessity, not the existence, of God. "Which God?" the secularist will ask. The God of Israel, the God of America's founders, "the Holy God who is made holy by justice" (Isaiah), the God of the Ten Commandments, the God who demands love of neighbor, the God who endows all human beings with certain inalienable rights, the God who is cited on the Liberty Bell because he is the author of liberty. That is the God being referred to here, without whom we will be vanquished by those who believe in less noble gods, both secular and divine.

Okay, he finally ends his argument, and once again leaves me aghast. He claims he is not arguing for God's existence, but he is. The argument from morality is just that. X exists, X can only come from God, therefore god exists.

Does he make a strong case? I think that history, real life experience, and logic show that he is wrong. Why? Because the middle part of his arguments, where X comes only from God, doesn't hold up. Only if X comes from God, without any doubt, can it be said that God exists. Since I have thrown doubt on his attempts to do this, Mr. Prager's argument is neither true, nor valid for all that matter. His attempt to cloud everything with the smoke and mirrors of patriotism only highlights his weakness.

He still needs to make an argument why "the God of Israel" is the right God. Simply writing an answer to the question is not sufficient. Everyone claims their God can deliver the same moral goods. He invokes the ten commandments as a code to follow, ignoring Leviticus and Deuteronomy and the clearly intolerant parts of the Bible. He commits all the usual fallacies of religious thinkers and ads a few brazen and unfounded allegations of his own to give his failure flourish.

The MACH IV Test

So I took a test to see how Machiavellian I am. It is a few years old, but the idea of what it means to be a "Machiavel" has not changed. Of course it is always been off the mark, since Machiavelli was always more of a republican than an authoritarian, though these days it's easy to confuse the two. The test is alright, even though its basis is a false understanding of Machiavelli, but they needed to tie it to someone and HOBBS-IV just doesn't have the same ring I guess.

1=strongly disagree, 2=disagree, 3=neutral, 4=agree, 5=strongly agree

1) Never tell anyone the real reason you did something unless it is useful to do so.
1 2 3 4 5

I put four down because it makes sense, you tell someone something because you think it is useful.

2) The best way to handle people is to tell them what they want to hear.
1 2 3 4 5

I put a four down in this case because there are situations where it is better for you to tell someone the hard truth, or just plain tell them off.

3) One should take action only when sure it is morally right.
1 2 3 4 5

I put a three because I was unsure how they defined "morally right." My belief is no one ever does anything immoral willingly, that there is a confusion in their hearts or heads. What is moral is what people on some level already want. Now someone else will disagree with them, but they are doing what they think is moral, always. Hitler did what he thought was moral and we bombed the hell of Germany because we felt it was the moral thing to do to stop him.

4) Most people are basically good and kind.
1 2 3 4 5

I was in the middle here, people don't usually go out of their way to screw you, but they also are fairly impotent when it comes to helping others. People are self-interested, but not selfish.

5) It is safest to assume that all people have a vicious streak and it will come out when they are given a chance.
1 2 3 4 5

Plenty of experiments have confirmed this, as has my childhood experiences on the playground when no adults are watching.

6) Honesty is the best policy in all cases.
1 2 3 4 5

Sometimes you have to tell a little lie, but I find that lies get you into more trouble than honesty most of the time.

7) There is no excuse for lying to someone else.
1 2 3 4 5

The old murderer at the door problem, I know Kant would say this, but I believe better to lie to him than let the murderer find out from you where your friend is hiding.

8) Generally speaking, people won't work hard unless they're forced to do so.
1 2 3 4 5

I have noticed this amongst my fellow students. This might only apply to Americans though.

9) All in all, it is better to be humble and honest than to be important and dishonest.
1 2 3 4 5

Dishonesty wins a person no friends and in the end that's what you need if you are going to hold onto anything.

10) When you ask someone to do something for you, it is best to give the real reasons for wanting it rather than giving reasons which carry more weight.
1 2 3 4 5

I always try to make them the same.

11) Most people who get ahead in the world lead clean, moral lives.
1 2 3 4 5

Look at the current administration. I would like to quote Balzac here, "behind every great fortune, there is a crime."

12) Anyone who completely trusts anyone else is asking for trouble.
1 2 3 4 5

But then again, some people like trouble

13) The biggest difference between most criminals and other people is that the criminals are stupid enough to get caught.
1 2 3 4 5

Proof: There is a difference between a bank robber and me. He robs banks. I do not. He could be out on the lam, still not caught, but still would be a criminal. I have not just simply evaded the cops, I have not held up a Wachovia at gunpoint.

14) Most people are brave.
1 2 3 4 5

You see both in Human affairs. So I am going to go with a three

15) It is wise to flatter important people.
1 2 3 4 5

Who would argue with this? It is also wise to be honest when they ask you, but the question isn't trying to find that out.

16) It is possible to be good in all respects.
1 2 3 4 5

You make sacrifices when you are a leader, even just to live with other people requires some ideals to be given up. Why do you think there are so many saints who were hermits or lived in cloisters?

17) P.T. Barnum was wrong when he said that there's a sucker born every minute.
1 2 3 4 5

If 255 people are born in a minute, then one could potentially be a sucker. Statistically I think it is possible.

18) It is hard to get ahead without cutting corners here and there.
1 2 3 4 5

Yes, it is hard, but that does not mean it is right. A Machiavellian and an idealist could both agree here and draw different conclusions. The former would say "Yes, so..." while the former would answer "Yes, but..."

19) People suffering from incurable diseases should have the choice of being put painlessly to death.
1 2 3 4 5

I don't see what this question is supposed to do. If they are voluntarily ending their lives, I don’t see what that has to do with Machiavellianism. One could believe in euthanasia as a humanist.

20) Most people forget more easily the death of their parents than the loss of their property.
1 2 3 4 5

I've read too many biographies of famous people to believe this. The absences of one or more parents is always mentioned, rarely the loss of a house. Both can be traumatic, but in terms of what people are more likely to actually swear revenge over is the former tragedy.

The test tells me I am a 68 out of a 100, a "high Mach." I think that this test really is not able to make that claim. Several of the questions could rank the same for either a low or high Mach, and 68 is not that far from the center, I feel. Being a high Mach seems like something you have to do fully or else you will end up hating yourself for everything you do and fail to do. I think a high Mach has to be an 80 or 85, at least.